When I wrote a post just now I came across a interesting problem. I tried to use "widespreadly" as the adverbial form of "widespread", but it was suggested a wrong word on my computer. I consulted a dictionary and couldn't find the word "widespreadly".
It seems quite normal to me to add -ly at the end of the adjective word "widespread" to make an adverbial word. Why is "widespeadly" not an established English word?
Answer
We would say
The use of the word is widespread nowadays.
and there widespread would be an adjectival modifier of the subject use attached to it by the predicate is.
Widespread is an interesting adjective. It's really a past-participle form, spread, with a sort of locative modifier wide, rolled up into a ball, as it were. If we untangle the ball we could say:
The use of the word is spread wide nowadays.
P.S. Compare parboiled, overdone.
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